Why
was it such a misfit?
The oddest thing about Sonic Christmas Blast is
that it not only doesn't fit in with classic Christmas
specials, it doesn't fit in with any Sonic video game or
TV series. The former fact turned out to be a good thing,
as the original title was "An X-Tremely Sonic
Christmas" in reference to Sonic X-Treme, a game
that was never completed (and that is quite a tale). Sega pushed its backup game, Sonic Sort-of-3D
Blast, in its place, and the special was renamed at the
eleventh hour.

Either way....It's not
x-treme, but it's not a blast either.

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In this special: Sonic
snowboards, he pokes out of a camera iris and winks, he
blasts around the circumference of the world many many
times (to go back in time and save Lois Lane?), he breaks
into some kid's house and whirls around his Christmas
tree, he defeats some robots by sawing a hole under them
with his speed, he snowboards again, and he paints over a
sign. And then the special starts.

As the cartoon opens, a bunch of zombie
people are standing in front of a large television
screen.
"Golly, Mom! When Santa appears on the TV, do I get
to ask him what I want?" a hideous buck-toothed kid
asks with childish glee. I don't care if this IS the
modern times of the mid-90's, there are some places where
technology should never intrude. What kid on this earth
OR on Mobius would prefer a cold cathode-ray tube to a
real man in a Santa costume? Come on.

Santa appears, but he
appears more...stiff-jointed than usual. The first thing
he does is announce his retirement, causing the ugly kid
to go "No! No! This must not happen!" There's a
lot of Hop-on-Pop dialogue throughout the special, where
characters speak the simplest sentences they can. Either
the writers didn't know much English, or they didn't want
kids at home to learn any.

Of course
"Santa" is stiff-jointed because he's really a
robot, built by Robotnik -- or Robotnik CLAUS, as he's
known now. Santabot does what he was programmed to do and
surrender all control to Robotnik, who starts addressing
the terrified tots. Scratch and Grounder, Robotnik's
syndicated sidekicks, appear off to the side in Dr. R's
studio as he makes his big speech. They should be quiet
while he's broadcasting, but they're not, and he doesn't
seem to mind. They're actually wearing cheerleading
outfits and shouting "YEAH! YEAH! GO ROBOTNIK!"
which isn't necessary. When I saw how they were dressed I
expected them to start reciting the Team Rocket motto,
but instead, they get into an argument about "whose
cheer was cheerier." Talk about your sycophants....

Robotnik Claus claims that
just because he's in charge of Christmas now doesn't mean
anything will be that different. EXCEPT all the toys are
to go to him instead of the children. He's GOTTA
have that Tickle Me Elmo!

Meanwhile, Sonic is off
somewhere talking to.....Princess Sally, who was in a
completely different show from Scratch and Grounder's.
Not only that, she's wearing her original pink color
palette, which the show didn't settle on. Sally only
appeared colored like that in the Sonic comic book, for
its first few months -- after that she went brown and
never went back. DEEK was using discarded model sheets
for this episode! Those crazy French.

We don't hear what Sally
just said but Sonic replies with an enthusiastic
"You GOT IT, Sal! Don't say another word!"
Sally really obeys him -- from this point on, she doesn't
speak at all. She just stands there, unanimated, in every
scene she appears in. That's one whipped squirrel.

"Come on, Tails, TIME
TO JUICE AND CUT IT LOOSE!" Sonic says while wearing
Air Jordans and smoking Camel Ultra-Tars.
"Where are we going, Sonic?"
"Princess Sally and I just agreed not to buy each
other anything for Christmas! So I'm heading off to the
Robotropolis mall!"
"But you just said--"
"That's what she said last year, and then she got me
a ton of stuff! And I didn't have anything for her!"
Sonic explains that when a princess says no, she must
really mean "buy me enough junk to fill an airplane
hangar." Sonic's going to do just that, because he's
one of the most overpaid media figures in the world.

The biggest problem with
picking Robotropolis to do your shopping in, especially
if you're a blue hedgehog, is that Robotnik lords over
the whole place. Sonic isn't worried, though, he's too
cool for school. There must be some reason why the entire
mall is devoid of merchandise and people, and it can't be
because of the economy. Robotnik took all the merchandise
for himself, and he won't stop there! Scratch and
Grounder are so heartless, they use a giant backhoe to
take away Bart Simpson's house!

The ugly kid appears
again, and he explains to Sonic that "everything's
terrible!" Robotnik actually shipped him to a robot
labor factory before he escaped. (Well, maybe ol'
Eggman's not SO bad.) "Santa put ROBOTNIK in charge!
We have to find the real Santa and convince him he's made
a mistake!" On that cue, Scratch and Grounder appear
in some weird tank/crane cross-hybrid, and explain the
Santa from the TV was a robot like them, as if we didn't
already know. Then they drop a block of iron wrapped with
a Christmas ribbon onto our heroes, and they cut to
commercial here, as if it wasn't obvious how Sonic could
get out of THAT....

After speeding out of the
thing's way, Sonic makes short work of Scratch and
Grounder, leaving them bashed into pieces on the ground.
As the bots pull themselves together, Sonic enters yet
again disguised as a janitor, and claims there's a fine
of ten thousand Robotnik-Bucks for littering the street
with their parts, but that he won't report them IF for
some reason they tell an average janitor where Santa
Claus is being stashed. Yeah, that's not suspicious. S
& G tell him right away, though. Santa's in an ice
cave seven miles south of the North Pole.

Back at Crazy Egg-Shaped
Maniac Headquarters, his robots are building chimneys all
over his fortress. The reason for this is because
Robotnik is a die-hard traditionalist, and though he may
be hijacking this holiday, he wants his presents
delivered to him the way the other Santa would if he
deserved presents. He actually expects every single
person in Robotropolis to go to his fortress and climb
down those chimneys to give him their gifts. He's bonkers
all right.

Sonic finds the cave
containing Santa guarded by Swat-Bots, which he
dispatches the usual way. There's a moment where he's
"cornered" on both sides by bots about to fire
lasers at him, but he zooms out right as they pull their
triggers and they blow up each other. At least, that's
what's implied. They actually cut away and don't show the
moment of impact. These are ROBOTS; they're usually the
one loophole to physical violence on censored kids' TV.
How can Sonic be expected to save the world if he can't
visibly dismantle these guys?

"Sonic! I've never
been so glad to see anyone!" Santa gushes as the
hedgehog frees him. They beat a path to his workshop,
only to find Robotnik has already been there and he's
taken everything. "Don't worry, Santa, I'll speed
back to Robotnik's and get the presents back!"
Jaleel White squeaks confidently.

"But we only have a
couple hours! Even if you could get the presents back,
there will be millions of them! There'll be no time to
deliver them!" Santa moans. What does he mean....no
time? The sun hasn't even set yet, and he's recovered
from worse time deficits in other specials.

Then Santa notices that
Sonic is now wearing a ring with a weird squiggle on it,
which was one of the gifts Sally gave him last year.
"I KNOW I've seen that symbol before! It was carved
into the caves where I was imprisoned!" They go back
to the cave again and Santa reads the rest of the
squiggles. "It says anybody who has that ring can
unlock the secrets of ULTIMATE VELOCITY! Super
speed!" Well, Sonic already has that. What good will
this do?

Actually it's supposed to
be speed even more super than Sonic is normally capable
of. Y'know, instead of pulling something like this out of
their hats, or worse areas, they could have done a tiny
bit of research into the games they're basing the special
on, and said Sonic can transform into Super Sonic by
collecting a Chaos Emerald. That I'd accept, even if it's
deux ex machina, because it's canon. This, however,
screams lazy.

But not as much as the
next sequence does. It becomes very obvious they need a
few more pages to pad out the script, because to activate
his new-gained super speed, Sonic must complete a few
incredible feats. First: zooming up to the top of a
mountain. Okaaay...done. Next: "snowboarding down
Calamity Cliffs." This leads to all the snowboarding
scenes we saw clips of in the opening montage. Have we
wasted enough time yet?

I guess so. We're back
at Robotnik's, where he's singing carols to himself. BOW
DOOOWN, BOW DOOOWN, BEFORE THE POWER OF ROBOTNIK CLAUS!
OR BE CRUUUSHED, BE CRUUUUSHED, BE CRUUUUSHED, BY HIS
JOLLY BOOTS OF DOOOOOOOOOM!

Sonic has super-speed now,
so a blue blur blasts into the room, curls around the
presents, and takes them all. The only possession he
leaves Robotnik with is his boxers, because what crazy
kid would want THOSE for Christmas?

Sonic delivers all the
presents at light speed. I think he pinched a few for
himself, because he makes a quick stop to bury Sally in
about twenty, and he never got anything from that mall.

Santa is eternally
grateful. "You delivered those presents faster than
I ever dreamed! You know...." He rubs his beard in
thought. "I've been thinking. Maybe that robot was
right. Maybe it IS my time to retire. And I want YOU as
my replacement! SONIC CLAUS!"
Oh no! Talk him out of it, Sonic! He looks like he's
about to, but then he admires himself in the mirror with
Santa's hat on, and says "Yeeeah, Sonic Claus!"

That is seriously where
they fade out. Sonic becomes Santa Claus. And if you
think about it, when's the point Sonic games started
sucking? About the time this cartoon came out. Since
1996, all our Christmas presents have been delivered by
Sonic the Hedgehog, and Sega's been using a subpar
lookalike!

"We wish you all a
Merry Christmas!" says Tails as he waves goodbye.
"Yeah. An EXTREMELY Merry Christmas!" says
Sonic, cleverly fitting in part of a title that no longer
exists.

Why didn't it fit in?
Despite the use of Robotropolis, the Swat-Bots, and the
Sally, many Sonic episode guides count this special as
the 66th episode of "Adventures of Sonic the
Hedgehog," because it shares more design
similarities with that show than the Saturday Morning
one. And...also because it's not very good, and AoStH
wasn't very good either.